Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder Andre Ethier on Tuesday stood behind comments he made to The Associated Press after Monday night's exhibition game in which he said this could be his final season with the club because, "a lot of signs are pointing that way."

Ethier is entering the final season of a two-year, $15.25 million contract that will pay him $9.25 million this year, and if he has even a decent season in 2011, he will receive a significant raise in 2012. But he won't be eligible for free agency until after 2012 because he won't have six years of big league service time at the end of this season. However, teams can choose to non-tender their arbitration-eligible players, making them free agents.

The Dodgers went that route with former All-Star catcher Russell Martin over the winter, and Ethier hinted that a similar fate could be in store for him.

"My salary is increasing each year," Ethier said. "I would say the likeliness of me being here beyond this year, it's not just my decision. ... I have been kind of lucky to be in one spot in baseball for as long as I have been, for six years now. That is a long time to be in one city playing for one team. There is no inclination now other than to go out and play this year and see what we've got.

"If I don't play well, we have seen them non-tender guys here. If you do play well, sometimes they don't offer those guys arbitration because their salaries are too high."

Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti said he wasn't aware of Ethier's remarks, either from Monday night or Tuesday afternoon, and he initially seemed taken aback by them.

"You will have to address that with him," Colletti said. "I don't have any comment on that at all."

But on the day the Dodgers finalized a three-year, $35 million contract extension for pitcher Chad Billingsley, Colletti did reveal that he had preliminary discussions during spring training with Nez Balelo, Ethier's Los Angeles-based agent, on a possible extension for Ethier, but that those discussions died fairly quickly.

Ethier insisted he was unaware that those talks had even begun between Colletti and Balelo, so he couldn't have been aware that they had been quickly abandoned.

"I guess they didn't get far enough for it to get to me," Ethier said. "I guess that shows you how serious they were."

Whatever motivates you, Andre, but you're training a klieg light on the dimmest of possibilities. Maybe you're bitter about the Dodgers releasing Russell Martin, but at some point it's unbecoming as well as unprofessional to degrade your talent (and the hopes of Dodger fans) to fuel your pride. And you passed that point a long time ago.

The dude has the baseball world in the palm of his hand with his talents yet he's moping around all dumb. I don't believe this motivation crap. The fool is in need of an attitude adjustment. And he needs to get laid.